Bob Harper

The Skinny Rules reached number one on the national bestseller list in 2012 on the back of television: Bob Harper had trained contestants on NBC's The Biggest Loser since its first season in 2004 and took over as host in 2015. The book sets out twenty fixed instructions, among them a large glass of water before every meal, protein at every meal, no starches after lunch, a meat-free day each week, and one planned splurge meal a week. Harper's credential is as a personal trainer and yoga teacher with private clients in Los Angeles, not a dietitian or a physician, and the nutrition writing was done with Greg Critser, a science journalist whose own Fat Land examined American weight gain. The pair also produced Jumpstart to Skinny and Skinny Habits, and Harper sold coaching through a subscription site alongside the books. In February 2017, aged fifty-one, he had a heart attack at a New York gym and spent two days unconscious; tests found a very high inherited level of lipoprotein(a), which raises cardiovascular risk whatever a person's fitness, and he has campaigned for testing since.